The Future: A Paradigm Shift

The dissipative system of the world wide web relates to the larger context of ideas and intellectual products as they reside within the free market economy.  More ideas demand a greater selectivity of the consumer within a self-proliferating environment.  As a result, firms and organizations may be finding vast demand shifts that will unapologetically grind all subjective progress to a halt as consumers "jump ship" to newer, more valuable products or ideas.  Our increasing interconnected society will only create more of these rapid market swings more rapidly as newer ideas are brought to the service by intellectuals, field leaders, and trendsetters.  Such is the way of entropy: either jump on-board the boat or fall into the swift current.

Allegorically, within the context of art production, tools, ease of use, and general understanding (via the proliferation of knowledge) are all factors which are shifting the paradigm from a consumer-based economy to a producer-based economy.  This unmistakeable paradigm shift is the first step in stripping industry from the idea that there is a consumer base for anything!  It is to my mind that there are fewer and fewer consumers in the world as production is becoming a maxim for society.  Memes including "be the change you want to see in the world" are ubiquitous amongst social networks, and could be cited as one of the many influences leading to such behavior.

Once again referencing the ideal of dissipative systems, as more artistic content is flung (either vicariously or cautiously) into the shared informational network, more jewels will inevitably forge just as more garbage will collect.  The fact here is that, increasingly, individuals are creating such content (albeit more garbage than jewels), NOT larger companies.

If you have managed to make it to this point in my relatively esoteric diatribe, I applaud you; but what I'm going to propose next might be a bit extreme (as even I consider it so).  Firms, companies, traditional factors of both material and intellectual production must, if they are concerned with the comparatively trivial matter of monetary success, abandon all stock in intellectual property.  The amount of consumers willing to and able to be tricked into buying into whatever it is a firm might have to sell is going to dwindle--quickly.  The future will hold a fruitless endeavor for all who hold complete stock in the one file that will make them a fortune on it's own.

As society elevates to a more developed frame of consciousness, the selectivity and proliferation of ideas will push firms to the edge of productive capacity.  You, the reader, might find this perspective to be resourceful in determining how your own ideal work will fit into the larger contextual frame of society, and in turn the universe.

The Future: A Proliferation

It is clear now more so than ever that file-sharing is not going anywhere.  In fact, peer to peer is becoming ubiquitous not only amongst creative types to support their endeavors, but by individuals to support their personal development and ideals.  Never before in human history has our species been able to interface so efficiently and freely without any apparent boundaries.  Piracy is the very manifestation of such phenomena, allowing for fewer financial resources in regards to idea expansion.  Put plainly, one does not necessarily need to purchase a book, a resource used ideally for personal development, but the digital native is now able to simply do a google search and download a chemistry reference source.

Attempts to quell such expansion of liberated thought from the bounds of monetary expectation is, to my mind, an injustice upon humanity.  You probably expect me to cite one of the many misappropriated Enlightenment Era mantras from the great minds of prophetic thinkers such as Locke or Hobbes at this point.  Rather, I would invite you to consider the aggregate benefits of such intellectual, digital symbiosis that is currently occurring within our society.  The advent of such free ideas is inherently supporting individuals, and in turn societies, to become the best versions of themselves in one way or another.

Dissipative systems theory supports the idea that out of great entropy, much order condensates.  Consider the internet in it's increasingly complicated cyberspace to be such a dissipative system full of ideas and energies beyond comprehension.  Mankind has created this great entropy, and out of it mankind benefits via the condensation of the strongest mimetic functions.

(Terence McKenna, prophetic visionary and systems theorist)

You may be thinking, well this is all well and good Dakota, but who is to benefit from this increase in aggregate intelligence despite piracy?  My unpopular answer lies in part two, saddle up.

The Fall Of Megaupload (Part Four)

Citing the initial indictment of Megaupload once more, it appears that the prosecution was simply looking for something nefarious out of intelligent website infrastructure, using legal concepts and hearsay to back their flawed intentions.  What's more, the indictment proclaimed the website's lack of search function to fall under criminal intent; however in other copyright cases such as Atari vs. Rapidshare lacking a search feature was seen as a way to prevent users from accessing such materials.  This classic catch twenty-two which worked paradoxically against the persecution during the case.

The devil is in the details here, as the warrants for said raid were not even valid as ruled by a New Zealand High Court Judge.  Furthermore, the pace of the raid was found to be unjustly swift, not allowing Kim Dotcom to defend himself in any way, shape, or form.  The USDOJ used charges of racketeering and money laundering to expedite the arrests, however this was in reference to the paid website hosting which Megaupload offered--an inherently legal activity.  How are we, as citizens of the United States, supposed to respect authorities trying to enforce copyright laws that can't even play by their own rules?  This has all shot the notion of copyright enforcement's credibility to shit as authorities' guerrilla, headstrong, and lobby-induced crackdowns become less meaningful, completely misplaced, and largely fruitless...

I hate to use this all-too ubiquitous card among those enraged about government musings, but it seems all of the other stops have been pulled already by the executive branch of our 'beloved' government...  How many tax payer dollars were wasted in the United States government's pursuit of the Megaupload case?  It is to mind that even a penny spent on harassing this business man was unjustly spent, as he was clearly only such.  Just because one provides a service that is effective in it's goals of spreading and sharing information does not mean that he should be persecuted for it's user's misuse of said service.  As I mentioned in the first part of this elongated diatribe, the internet was designed in such a fashion that encourages, no, demands the proliferation of all ideas whether they are protected by a now largely obsolete and archaic law or not!

While this section of The Fall Of Megaupload was distinctly fact-oriented, there is still more philosophical content to come, believe it or not.  Onward to the epilogue!

The Fall Of Megaupload (Part Three)

Let us remember that Megaupload is not alone in the world of pirate hunting within the digital age.  Rapidshare has similarly come under fire from a number of major record labels for allowing illegal content to be hosted.  Guess who?  That's right, Metallica's Death Magnetic record was leaked on Rapidshare for whatever reason, causing the metal monolith to become involved in shaping yet another business' policies (or so they thought).  While Rapidshare was forced to give away the details of those that leaked the files, they publicly vowed to never again spy on their users the next year, shiesty rhetoric at best, I say.

Whether or not Rapidshare has stuck to their statement is beyond the scope of you or myself; however you may be interested to know that in the very same year (2009-2010) Atari's case against Rapidshare was found to be unjust as an appeal from Rapidshare lead to the Dusseldorf higher court acquitting them of all charges.  To elaborate, Rapidshare was unknowingly distributing the then newly released game "Alone In The Dark" on their servers.  Atari suited a case against the company, imploring that the company must be held accountable and therefore screen to remove such illegal uploads.  However, the counterargument won out as the appeal that such removal would strip away a great deal of legally distributed or backed up material that paying users benefit from.  Indeed this is the polar opposite of Megaupload's case, in which the government sided with the hosting service: way to go Germany!

The Fall Of Megaupload (Part Two)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) demanded that Kim Dotcom and his constituents be extradited on the grounds of a racketeering and money laundering charge; all of which was effectively acquitted during the trial, by the way.  The indictment statement also alleged that Megaupload offered no attempt in screening content for copyright protection.  The fact that the site's revenue was based off of advertisement coupled with the download allocation and prioritization of popular uploads offered the prosecution cause to allege that Megaupload was deliberately hosting copyright protected material for profit.  However, the defense was on relatively stable ground in the sense that they were not responsible for user activity, nor did they encourage such larceny outright.  The decision regarding the foundation of his extradition has been continually appealed, but currently Kim Dotcom has run out of money to support his legal council.  Currently, the appeal court ruled that the raids were legal, but the taking of evidence was clearly unauthorized.  He is still to be extradited despite the unauthorized copying of data by the FBI, but is currently at home.

It was January 20th, 2012 on Kim Dotcom's birthday that the New Zealand Police force raided Dotcom's 30 million dollar compound.  The founder of Megaupload was denied bail, deemed a flight risk as he had a helicopter in his front yard.  Considering the rhetorical context of the raid security camera footage the arrest would have one thinking that Kim Dotcom was an international arms dealer.  What with helicopters being flown around the compound, policemen armed with assault rifles, bullet proof vests, and canines, it is apparent that this massive action taken against an owner of a private firm was a bit overboard--almost anti-terrorist in nature.

To what end are we to hold service providers accountable for copyright infringement if it is the users that are the ultimate offenders?  What legal discourse is appropriate to deal with situations?  My answers to all of this come, within some capacity, in the final installment of this five-part series: stay tuned!

The Fall Of Megaupload (Part One)

The internet was designed under the intent that users would BOTH send and receive bits of information, especially in the early days where computers were multi-million dollar machines.  There was no hierarchy, and no one was in control.  Much to the dismay of the World Trade Organization (WTO) such is still the case as net neutrality has remained relatively intact despite the efforts of governments such as the United States to influence the global network otherwise.  Historically, sites including The Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents, Megaupload and Limewire have taken this maxim of the world wide web and extrapolated it into both cloud-based sharing and peer to peer file sharing services.

Ever since the seizure of Napster in 2001, there has been a never-ending quest to protect copyright holders' rights to distribute and monetize their own content.  More recently, Megaupload, the brainchild of Kim Dotcom, was seized in 2012.  The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) along with the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) worked in cohorts to take down the site; alleging that Megaupload was costing copyright holders an estimated $500 million in revenue.  Shocking, that a large industry headed by media moguls, who are in bed with both sides of the political isle, would be able to effectively enact a swift strike to the free information enterprise.

(MPAA Logo)

My concern is largely out of the premise in which Megaupload was able to be shutdown.  The indictment of the site as a criminal enterprise seems a bit discontinuous to me, as the site itself was structured in a rather logical frame for any public file-sharing site to be constructed.  Was Kim Dotcom punished for his genius?  What right did the United States have in policing a company based in Hong Kong?  And what does all of this mean for the larger context of cloud-based and peer to peer file sharing giants in regard to indictment?  Stay tuned for part two for my musings on the issue.  Fair warning: it's going to get philosophical pretty quickly, so tighten your seat belts.

My Favorite Service (Down The List Part Seven)

Here it is folks, the moment you've all been waiting for...  If you have had the patience to read through my various diatribes regarding the less popular and successful file-sharing websites featured on eBizMBA's extensive list, then you have probably noticed my standards for what I consider proper file sharing to be rather high.  To my mind, a file sharing service should be intuitive, flexible, secure, have decent free features, and be crystal clear in what they provide to those who wish to support the site financially.  Until this point, website after website has fallen short in one or more of these categories, making what is currently my favorite file sharing service sit on it's prestigious pedestal.

MEGA is one of the newest and most impressive services as it has risen out of the ashes of the monstrously controversial site, Megaupload.  Kim Dotcom, the creator of Megaupload, was forced to shutdown the site after the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) worked in cohorts with the New Zealand government to arrest Dotcom and seize his servers. All of this was on the grounds that Dotcom was allegedly intentionally hosting material protected by copyright; barring any investigation, the USDOJ had Megaupload shutdown overnight after they raided Dotcom's private compound in New Zealand.

VICE did a report on the controversy, albeit a bit over-dramatic at times, which cover's Dotcom's perspective on the case as well as the events of the raid.  In this report Dotcom also details the specifics of MEGA; full end-to-end encryption, a whopping 50GB of free storage space, and exclusive user-based connection.  What's more, MEGA aims to be more than just a file sharing service; for around the price of $10/month, users will be able to chat and video call utilizing end-to-end encryption (a feature not even Skype offers).

In this post, I have decided to stick to the basics and lay the groundwork of the controversy.  However, next week I will dive even deeper into the MEGA conflict, challenging the epistemology and processes of governments regarding copyright and privacy in the post-modern, digital age.